SharePoint 2013/16/19: Components Overview

Recommended Server Topologies

  • This section provides an overview of server topologies based on the relative size of your SharePoint environment.

  • These server topologies focus on the document indexing and preview generation functions.

  • Smart Previews does not require dedicated hardware

  • For this reason, it is possible to run the Smart Previews server on the same box as your SharePoint index server, as shown below.

Single Node Installations

If you are performing a single node install, see the following images.

Multi-Node Installations

If you are performing a multi-node install, see the following images.

On-Premise Installation Using SharePoint SSA


SharePoint 2013/16/19 Domain and Components

Smart Previews Components

Smart Previews is composed of a number of various components working together such as:

  • Databases

  • Crawlers

  • Services

See the description of the various Smart Preview components in the table below:

Component Description
Content Sources

  • Indicates where the content to be crawled originated from. 

  • For SharePoint On-Premises, these are either the native SharePoint content sources, or content sources configured in the Connector Framework.
Crawler The Sharepoint SSA Crawling Component(s).
CEWS

  • The Content Enrichment Web Service is an enrichment component called by the Connector Framework at crawl time, and saves the content so that a preview can be generated. 

  • This component saves to the Preview CEWS Output Directory.
FAST Proxy Service

  • This service that takes the files that are stored in the Preview CEWS Output Directory, and places them into the Transfer Folder.  

  • Fast Proxy service validates the file against the preview generation rules configured via the Import Server UI, discarding any files that do not need to be processed based on the rules.
Smart Previews SharePoint Monitoring Service This is the service that monitors the Transfer Folder and moves data to the Smart Previews Import Server.
Import Server This is the Smart Previews Import Server generates the Previews and places them in the databases.
Databases

There are 3 Smart Previews databases:

  • Preview Cache: Where the generated previews are stored. (You may have 1 or more of these databases.)
  • Preview Configuration: Contains a master index of the generated previews generated along with the required configuration settings.
  • Preview User Profile: Contains information that is added or updated when users use their workspace.
Fetchers A part of the Smart Previews Service Application, Fetchers retrieve files from the content source(s) when generating previews on-demand.
Smart Previews Service Application

The component of preview that retrieves the preview from the database in response to a request from the UI.